Universe Bingo
by Tragedy Tay
Summary: Five universes the Doctor and Amy bounced around in for awhile. Doctor/Rose; Amy.


There's a universe where Amelia Pond is a man.

"You've just created about thirteen-point-seven…trillion, _trillion_ paradoxes, I hope you're aware."

"He's a good kisser."

"Well, that is completely off-point." She smirks and he glares (forcefully!). "You know, for someone who's being stalked about by cracks in the entirety of space and time, you're awfully blasé about the whole concept-"

"Oi, you said they weren't – _you said - _!"

"Not to mention it's a little bit…incestuous, wouldn't you think?" he muses, and Amy is completely and rather disappointingly nonplussed.

"Nah. Did I tell you his name was Ambrose?"

"That's just terrible."

Luckily, in the end it turns out that this is the universe where you're supposed to meet yourself when traversing other universes due to an accidental breach in the Rift due in turn to someone spilling blue zebra-juice on the transmorphal reactor of the frexspar conversion mediatalatortrixatron (and you have red hair).

But still.

a-a-a

There's a universe with an influx of tigers, and also he is a rock sensation throughout the stars.

Amy buys him a safari hat of her own volition. She's not completely unfond of this universe.

"I never want to leave, never." He leans back against one of several almost comically oversized pillows, made of only the finest materials, obviously. A statue of himself looms over them. A horde of rioting, worshipful fanatics outside this palace shaped like his head. Amy slumped next to him, sipping something greenish. This is completely acceptable. "Get comfortable, Pond." The hat tips over his eyes, although that is rather less comfortable, and he considers removing it when there is a tiger attack.

"Time to go."

"It's just tigers! I thought this place had anti-feline gates? And I want to at least finish this, tastes like _heaven_ -"

"You wouldn't if I told you what was in it. Well, I say what, you know, it's really more of a _who_ - "

It's not quite as hard to get going after that, especially not after the tigers breach the defenses. Never trust a universe full of semi-intelligent tigers; he tries to explain this to Amy when they get back to the TARDIS, but he doubts any of it gets through, considering that she is unsuccessfully trying to throttle him with his new safari hat.

"I'm never taking this off, never," he tells her.

b-b-b

There's a universe where Rose is.

He's been here before. And then later, sort of, in a sense. And fully, that one last time. Just for a minute, just for that last-that-wasn't-the-last-apparently moment, but still.

He doesn't see her. They aren't in Norway, at least, but it still didn't bring them directly to her doorstep.

She's here though. She's here.

He takes off the safari hat.

"I've been here before."

Amy scuffs her foot in the dirt. "Mmm. Bit grimy. Is this the grimy universe?"

"No. Well, maybe." He stalks forward, this is definitely not Europe, but she's here. There's nothing telling him she's here other than all his instincts and all his knowledge of everything that makes the TARDIS tick. So she's here.

Amy keeps pace, silent.

Out of nowhere, the Doctor hopes he hasn't stuck Rose in a grimy universe. That dam opened, he suddenly hopes a lot of things.

She could be any number of things. She could be old. She could be dead. She could have left him. She could have stayed with him. She could be waiting. She could be going.

He feels out the possibilities (he hates each and every one, in his most selfish self) with his tongue against his teeth, like he's searching for a bit of food between them.

He's not meant to find her here. He can't be. That's what the TARDIS means.

"Oh no, I've just remembered…something terrible about this universe. It's just awful. Terrible. The worst, actually, so - "

She hums angrily at him as he yanks Amy back aboard, but it's obviously because he's seen through her hilarious practical joke.

"Next!" calls the Doctor.

"Next!" echoes Amy, a question in her eyes, but she claps along with the TARDIS' chuffing just the same.

_Not here_, he thinks, desperately: _anywhere but here_.

Never trust a man who can't stop running, Amy. Never.

c-c-c

There's a universe where he's a human, or some other such nonsense. And he married Rose.

And that's it. They met, and then later they got married, and he looks like himself and here they are.

He learns this through careful and not at all alarming inquiries at what seems to be his kitchen table, an indeterminable number of children running roughshod through the cottage, shouting incomprehensibly at him and rendering him extremely sticky.

"Hello, Rose," he'd said, letting himself into the place, ivy creeping up the walls, and a rather large spider web in the corner of the doorframe. He'd gotten rid of Amy with a wad of sonic-ed bills and a shove in the direction of town, the smells from some of the restaurants getting the better of her.

The Doctor had gone on alone.

No idea what he'd tell her. No idea what story he'd use, what name he'd come up with, he'd had every intention of being some sort of travelling salesman (he could sell her that string he had!), and then there she was inside the door, he could see her, and then the door had somehow opened, and it just slipped out of his mouth: "Hello, Rose."

He just leaned there for a second, looking at her.

She's tired, with dark circles under her eyes, and she's skinnier than he's used to, wearing stained clothes and shaking tangled hair out of her face to get a look at him, baby at her hip squalling and shrieking.

He notices those things, he does, but what he's really doing here is staring at her like a starving man, so it's not like any of this makes a difference to him at this moment. A terrible, terrible dread falls upon him like rain, because now it has begun.

It's not Rose. Not really.

And he'd honestly thought that would make a difference at all.

"What the hell're you doing here?" Rose shifts the child into his arms before he can say a word. "S' not even noon yet, is it? Got off early?" And then, much more irritably, "Well, stop letting all the heat out, we've got about ten colds between us!"

He mouths something, the baby keeps screaming. Rose shakes her head, and disappears up a staircase. Is he meant to follow? He wavers on the spot, and the baby hiccups at the sudden motion, going a bit quieter, which is a relief. He hears the shower start up, and heads for the kitchen, kicking himself mentally for doing this in the first place. This paradoxical day is wearing on him.

Rose shouts after that: shouts at various children, shouts at the cat, shouts at him. He tries not to analyze the way he revels in it. Considers complimenting her on it. Decides against it. She makes him a lunch that he pretends to enjoy. She wipes so many tiny little noses that it's ridiculous.

He thinks he should help her, tries to do dishes, to quiet the children, but he only succeeds in breaking the china and bringing the total volume of their offspring (no, not theirs, _hers, _nothis_, hers_) to a level that is really just astounding.

He looks guiltily at Rose, but she just laughs, and for a second he's frozen, absolutely frozen. Another boy hanging off his neck kicks him ("_Daddy, move!"_) but he stares at her. The strangest feeling is swelling through him, and the way she looks back at him, the Doctor knows she must feel something similar, something like this, and…does she feel like this all the time? Does he, the he who belongs here, the he who thought to make this happen? Is this how it feels?

Rose laughs.

Hours and hours, he stays here, _hides _here, in this warm, cramped place that is full to the brim with humanity. If Rose notices something is off, she doesn't say it to him, but the hours here are stolen, at best; a ridiculously terrible risk at worst.

A stroke of brilliance hits him at quarter-four, as he is bouncing a sleepy toddler on his knees to the beat of something insipid coming from the television. "Why don't you go and have a nap?" he offers, and Rose's smile is just like before. Just so. His chest swells.

"Yeah? Alright," she says, running a hand through his hair, the fingers prick at his scalp in the most _satisfactory_ way, and he arches into her hand like a kitten. How embarrassing. She laughs. Just so. Just so. "Need a haircut," she calls as she leaves, and he frowns indignantly.

He's just married to Rose. Just home from work, married to Rose, father to all these brats that he's overly fond of. Rose is a mum, and he is a dad who works at some far-off place known only to him as "work", and there is someone called Jenkins there, apparently, but then there's always a Jenkins at places like "work".

The little boy the Doctor has been holding is just now asleep, as well as leaking some kind of bodily fluid onto his jacket (yes, of course the Doctor is proud of this really great multitasking) when the back door opens, and he hears his own footsteps enter, and oh, he should leave, he should go right now before everything explodes, everything gone wibbly and wobbly and off its nut.

But then, he only gets to stare at himself once or twice or sometimes thrice every regeneration, and plus he gets lost on the way out.

They look at each other. The Doctor hands back the child, because he is not a dad, and Rose is still a mum, and this breaks a minute-long silence. The man that he is not accepts the boy with a practiced air that the Doctor is a bit disgusted to see mastered.

"How did you do this?" they say at the same time, but for very different reasons. Mouths open and close, eyes are so very unnerving, and Rose is asleep.

"Rose is asleep," he tells the man who isn't the Doctor, "and she's quite excellent at yelling," and then he goes.

Truthfully, the Doctor bolts. Collects Amy from the pub she's set up camp in ("_Damn it, can't I have one drink that isn't made of something sentient, just this one time?_" and no, no she cannot), and bolts. Leaps and bounds, concerned only with putting as much distance between himself and himself as he possibly can, he has to go, has to go _now._

Amy doesn't say a word, and that shames him more than any of the rest of it.

d-d-d

There's a universe where everything is blue.

It's very hard to find the TARDIS again.

"Is this it?"

"No, Amy, that is a rock. It's…a very nice rock, though."

Repeat.

e-e-e

They end up finding home, eventually. But how can they really be sure?

"Well, there aren't us here," says the Doctor. "I don't think so. But then, this could be the universe where you're meant to think that you've made it back, when in reality you haven't, so you just live in an illusion, but you don't realize it's an illusion, or it could be the universe where things seem the same until you're knee-deep in universe slug, or it could be the universe where everything is the same except we all eat paper, which, incidentally, varies astoundingly in taste from paper to paper, or - "

"Close enough," says Amy. She puts her head on his shoulder, and he pulls her closer. The singular sun is setting, and he is more exhausted than he can remember being in the last century or so. "So long as we don't have forked tongues, or breathe fire, or swim in magma here. Then it's close enough, Doctor. This is good enough." They sit. "Good enough for rock n'roll," she says, in a husky voice that makes him think of danger, and fire, and he feels a burst of _fun_.

"And if the tongues are a possibility?"

She laughs.

end.


End file.
